Ephemeral
by messyfeathers
Summary: The worst side effect of re-education isn't the physical injuries or the gaps in memory. It's the realization that everything in life is transient.


_I received a request for existential angst and/or a fight, so I figured I'd mix a little of both. Night Vale belongs to commonplacebooks._

* * *

Cecil is late. Very late. With the new management, Carlos has grown accustomed to postponing supper a few nights a week now. Eventually Cecil always comes home, takes a deep breath, and tells him everything is alright. Never before though has he taken quite _this _long getting through 're-education' or 'employee reorientation' or whatever official-sounding name management has chosen this time for his punishment.

Unsure of a better channel for his nerves, Carlos is tapping out irregular rhythms on the floorboards with his heel as he sits waiting for the door to open. The house creaks ever so slightly in protest. He's spent the last twenty or so minutes trying to decide whether or not to go out looking for Cecil, and has finally decided in favor of the venture when the front door opens and Cecil steps through. In an instant, Carlos has his arms around him, not taking for granted the familiar scent of teakwood and soap or the way Cecil's arms feel wrapped tightly around his waist. Tonight there's something different than usual though. Something has changed. Carlos tentatively leans back as far as he can in Cecil's arms to examine him more thoroughly. There are small red stains the size of papercuts on his shirt and a cauterized gash along his jawline, but nothing worse. There have been worse nights when Carlos had to wash and treat and bandage. This time the majority of the damage seems to be somewhere in Cecil's unfocused eyes that don't seem to see him as much as they see _through _him.

"What's happened?" A cold fear tightens his throat, and the question comes out as a breath more than anything. But Cecil blinks and the clarity returns slightly. He smiles, kisses Carlos on the forehead, and lets go.

"It's nothing. Management just had some new training exercises." It's clear through his nonchalance that whatever the exercises were, discussing them isn't something Cecil feels up to doing. "If it's okay, I think I'm going to head straight to bed." Carlos doesn't object as it's well past midnight already. By the time he gets the lights switched off and the doors locked, Cecil is already out of his work clothes and in bed. Carlos still can't shake the feeling that something worse happened than he's letting on.

"You sure you're alright?" he asks as he settles in on his side of the bed. Cecil hums a noncommittal response without more than a glance in his direction. The silence stretches on until it becomes almost unnerving. "I ran into Miriam Cohen today," he offers in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. "Her Barbed Dachshund just had puppies. I was thinking maybe we could stop by tomorrow and have a look. She showed me pictures, and they're adorable."

"I don't want to get a dog," Cecil interjects abruptly.

"I thought last week you were saying you wanted one of the puppies from the Municipal Building. I mean, that's still a viable option too I guess, but we'd have to get shots for it, and I'd have to run some tests to make sure it's still fully a dog-"

"I changed my mind." Even though there's nothing particularly cruel about the words, the way they are spoken makes them biting and cold. All at once Carlos can feel that strange fear churning again in his stomach.

"It doesn't have to be a dog. I can take another look at Khoshekh and the kittens. Nothing I've tried seemed to help, but that doesn't mean I won't eventually find some way to get them down."

"Carlos." The two syllables aren't gently purred as they always have been. Instead they punctuate the air between them like a knife. "It doesn't matter what animal it is, I don't want one."

"Did something happen to change your mind?" Carlos ventures carefully.

"I don't want one because they die, Carlos," Cecil snaps brusquely. "Why would I willingly love and care for a creature whose only destiny in life is to die? I mean, what is the point of pets anyway? You invest time and money and emotion in them, and then one day you wake up and they're gone, leaving you with a specifically shaped hole that you can't fill again. Don't even give me that whole speech either about 'just getting another.' You create _unique_ memories with pets. Memories don't die. You have to live on, carrying them with you forever. They don't die, and pets do, and I don't want one." The rant completely catches Carlos off guard. He was prepared for an array of emotional responses, but definitely not this one in particular.

"Cecil, when it comes to pets you have to focus on the present and not the future." His attempt to calm Cecil down only succeeds in increasing the friction.

"It's stupid. It's like a long-term investment on pain. Why would I go into something knowing it's going to hurt me in the end?" Carlos can feel his patience slowly chipping away in pieces.

"Dogs live for lots of years, Cecil. Some live ten, twelve years. It's a long time, trust me. In twelve years you'll be an entirely different person, it will all feel very different by then."

"So in twelve years you think I'll be so calloused to the idea of loss that I'll be numb?"

"No -_ god_ - that's not - why are we even fighting about this?" the words are twisting out of order and Carlos can't seem to rearrange them. He rakes his fingers through his hair twice and takes a breath. "Fine. _Fine._ We'll get a pet rock. Without significant weathering or erosion they'll live millions of years and I sincerely hope by that time _I'll_ be dead." When Cecil finally speaks again, his voice is no longer crisp and biting and angry. Instead he simply sounds tired.

"Please don't trivialize my emotions."

"I'm not trivializing your emotions, I'm not." Carlos takes another slow breath. "I just don't understand why you're so upset about this." For a moment, Cecil looks as if he's formulating a response before he simply buries his face in his hands. They've never had passionate arguments over pets before, but emotionally charged existential musings in the middle of the night aren't uncommon for them. Usually when Cecil reaches a reaction like this, Carlos knows the very worst has passed and it's only a matter of time before he'll come around. After a few minutes, he reaches over with the intention of gently rubbing Cecil's back, but the look of devastation the moment they touch causes him to shrink back immediately.

"I think I'm going to sleep on the sofa," Cecil mumbles as he climbs out of bed and snatches a blanket from a hamper in the corner. Carlos follows him as far as the end of the hallway, pleading with him to come back to bed.

"Did I do something wrong?" he asks helplessly as he watches Cecil make up a little nest of blankets on the faded floral upholstery.

"It's not something you did. I just need to be alone right now, and I would appreciate it if you could respect that." Cecil's words are still resigned and hollow. It feels substantially worse than the caustic fighting.

"Can I at least kiss you goodnight?" Carlos asks quietly after a long time.

"I'd prefer if you didn't." He rakes another hand through his hair, entirely unsure of exactly how or why things spiraled so miserably out of control so very quickly. Eventually he too resigns himself to what's going to be a long night.

"I love you," he says simply before turning back down the hallway. Cecil's stuttered reply is almost too soft to be heard.

"I know."

Time doesn't work in Night Vale. Carlos curses the alarm clock on the dresser that has been frozen at 12:47 for what must be an hour now. He's curled up around one of Cecil's pillows waiting for sleep to claim him. Instead, unconsciousness seems content to swallow him and spit him back out in ragged twenty-minute breaths while the clock approaches 1:00 with painful reluctance. The hazy half-awake state leaves him plenty of space to think. At first he wonders if Cecil lost another intern tonight. Logic would say that he should never befriend them in the first place with the appalling rate at which they expire, but Cecil genuinely loves people too much for that. He almost never talks about them after they're gone. On the air, he even treats their deaths with indifference or at the most a professional cordiality. Carlos knows better; he's stopped by the station several times before and found Cecil sitting in the break room speaking soothingly to the rows of memorial markers.

The theory is plausible, but Carlos can't shake the impression that something still seems missing. Cecil rarely raises his voice, especially not at him. The sheets feel scratchy, the blankets heavy. Tossing them off onto his boyfriend's half of the bed, Carlos readjusts into a new position and closes his eyes in anticipation of the next wave of restless sleep. Just as he begins to wonder if possibly this time he'll actually _stay_ asleep, his subconscious manages to fit the puzzle together. He's already halfway down the hallway before he stops to consider what to say. Carefully he pads the rest of the way into the quiet living room and settles to his knees in front of the shape curled up on the cushions.

"It's me," he whispers. It doesn't matter that Cecil's still sound asleep. Carlos has never been the best with words even when his audience is conscious. "This wasn't about a dog, it was about me. You don't want to love me because you're afraid I'm going to die someday." The full weight of the words doesn't hit him until he hears himself say them out loud. The cold panic creeps back again, this time settling permanently in his chest. The air is still and stifling, making it even harder to breathe. Cecil doesn't even stir. Unfortunately for Carlos, knowing the truth doesn't make it any easier to come up with a way to deal with it. The silence seems threatening, but he's too tired to fight it. "I wouldn't know what to say to fix this anyway," he says to the floorboards as he traces along one of the rough notches with a fingertip.

"Would you know how to try?" Cecil blinks at him through the darkness, catching him off-guard as he's abruptly torn away from his thoughts.

"Just because something's destined to die doesn't mean it isn't worth loving." The simplicity of the concept surprises Carlos as he says it. Cecil pushes himself up to a sitting position to make room for his boyfriend on the sofa. "Existence is ephemeral, Cecil, and there's no proof of an afterlife. What matters is how we spend the numbered moments." Cecil reaches out for his hand, then pulls away suddenly as if he's changed his mind again.

"I thought you were dead for three minutes once. I didn't know you then, not like I do now, but I can still remember the way it felt. It was like the air had lost all its oxygen. The thought of that again, but multiplied exponentially for every day we've spent together since… One day I'll wake up alone and your half of the bed will be cold, and I'll have to know that every day after that your half of the bed will _always _be cold, and I'll never have you back." Cecil hugs his arms in close to himself even though the air in the house is too oppressive for him to possibly be chilled.

"It's a choice," Carlos explains. "You can lock yourself away and save yourself the pain, or you can choose to open yourself up to whatever comes and hope the good will be enough to help you make it through the bad. Either way you're going to die all the same." It's too late at night to be sugarcoating things. Cecil doesn't seem fazed as he nods in agreement.

"I made my choice the very first time I saw you." His eyes lock on the same notch in the floor, though his expression suggests he's somewhere far away. "But you were wrong earlier. It isn't you." He pauses and takes a deep breath. "What if one of these nights I don't come through that door? What if _you're_ the one waking up alone every morning, and it's my side of the bed that's empty?" He blinks, and a single tear slips almost unnoticed down past the neatly-sealed wound that only accentuates the validity of his argument. "I refuse to put you through that. It's better if you stopped caring long before that point."

"That is not your decision." Carlos doesn't intend for the statement to come out as harshly as it sounds, but the absurdity of Cecil's twisted logic and the lack of sleep have sapped his words of delicacy. It takes some effort, but he attempts to soften his approach. "We both made choices, Cecil. If you don't come through that door one of these nights, then I'll come looking for you." Cecil still won't lift his gaze from the notch in the floor, though Carlos suspects it's more because he's trying to hide the second tear as it briefly catches the moonlight. Carlos clears his throat. "And if it's all the same to you, I'd rather spend the remainder of my finite mornings _not_ waking up alone." Cecil reaches for his hand then and clings to it like a lifeline, refusing to let go until they're nestled against each other beneath the blankets. Carlos pulls Cecil close into his arms, discreetly counting the still-healing scars across his chest as he does every night now to make sure there aren't any fresh marks.

"I didn't mean it earlier, you know. We can go look at those Barbed Dachshunds tomorrow if you like," he says with a residual little hiccup. "Or stray puppies or floating cats or I guess rocks." Now that the clock finally reads 1:00 sleep has decided to tug at the scientist's focus, but he manages a little hum of acknowledgement. "Carlos?"

"Yeah?" he yawns.

"I love you too." Grateful that tonight the count has remained the same, Carlos brushes his fingertips across unblemished skin and plants a kiss to Cecil's shoulder.

"I know."


End file.
